Security and identity in United States foreign policy : a reading of the Carter administration

Abstract

The analysis in this thesis derives its impetus from three ‘windows of opportunity' present in current academic debates. The first is the opening made possible by the wide-ranging and interdisciplinary debate over the nature of social and political inquiry. The second, both an instance of and response to the first, is the theoretical confusion that currently exists in the discipline of International Relations. The third is the confusion that exists in the literature of International Relations concerning the reasons behind the Carter administration's foreign policy ‘failure’. These three openings are brought together in an account that reconceptualizes foreign policy in light of the interdisciplinary debate over the nature of social and political inquiry, offers a reinterpretation of United States foreign policy in the postwar era, and then seeks to account for the Carter administration in these new terms. The argument in this thesis is about the problematizations which make possible our understanding of global life. It seeks to demonstrate the particular problematization that makes possible the modes of analysis in the discipline of International Relations, the particular problematization that makes possible United States foreign policy, and the particular problematization that makes possible the conventional interpretation of the Carter administration. In this context, the discussion of the Carter administration’s foreign policy is not about its policy per se. Rather, it is about how its 'foreign policy' was made possible via a discursive economy that gave value to representational practices associated with a particular problematization. It is argued that ‘foreign polic/ needs to be understood as a political practice which establishes the boundary between the ‘domestic’ and the ‘international’, and brings a particular manifestation of both domains into existence. Foreign policy plays an important role in the creation and maintenance of a society’s identity through the transference of the differences within society to differences between societies. This is achieved via an inscription of danger (in what becomes the external realm), whereby the problems, fears and dangers of ‘man’ in ‘domestic’ society are externalized and totalized. What is at stake in foreign policy, therefore, is the defense of a particular identity through the writing of a particular understanding of security. Security, in this sense, refers to the issues involved in the inscription of danger. The thesis then brings this reconceputalization of foreign policy to bear upon postwar United States foreign policy, followed by a more detailed consideration of the Carter administration. Show more